Are any of the collection missions (besides lives) worth doing?

[CardSharx]

I finally finished the Live collection missions. The last few days I've developed a few thousand PP, and I'm wondering if I should try to do any of the other collection missions or just upgrade individual players in the auction house. It doesn't really look like any of the other collection missions are worth it. You have to spend like 2000 PP just to finish a collection mission with a prize of a standard pack valued at 1000 PP. Am I missing something?

[QuantaCondor]

Originally Posted by CardSharx

I finally finished the Live collection missions. The last few days I've developed a few thousand PP, and I'm wondering if I should try to do any of the other collection missions or just upgrade individual players in the auction house. It doesn't really look like any of the other collection missions are worth it. You have to spend like 2000 PP just to finish a collection mission with a prize of a standard pack valued at 1000 PP. Am I missing something?

Some pack missions might still be worth it, but those are pretty minor. The next sets after the live ones tend to cost a lot more, with a bigger emphasis on trying to get value out of the locked players. Appling comes to mind, maybe some of the TOTD ones like the 1800s-1920s or 1940s. SE Jackie is good. But they all cost a lot more PP. Your next best option probably involves building a tourney team so you can churn up more PP. Once you're sitting closer to 100k, then you could think about revisiting some of these bigger sets.

[CardSharx]

Originally Posted by QuantaCondor

Some pack missions might still be worth it, but those are pretty minor. The next sets after the live ones tend to cost a lot more, with a bigger emphasis on trying to get value out of the locked players. Appling comes to mind, maybe some of the TOTD ones like the 1800s-1920s or 1940s. SE Jackie is good. But they all cost a lot more PP. Your next best option probably involves building a tourney team so you can churn up more PP. Once you're sitting closer to 100k, then you could think about revisiting some of these bigger sets.

Will that even be possible with 100K? Just looking at the Negro Leagues set, it seems some of the cards will cost 100K themselves.

[Caedus]

Prices for some of the collections that pay out great cards are still way high. I’m not sure you can complete the SE Jackie for less than what he’s worth yet.

I did the SE Appling collection for about 80K which was worth it, but I had already pulled 96 Ernie Banks and the Gold Appling in packs. That was worth it.

Everything else I’m not sure. I just did the 1960s Team of the Decade and the only reason it was worth it was I pulled a Peak Clemens in one of the six historical packs. Otherwise it was an outlay of like 70-80k for six historical packs and Mays, which isn’t amazing.

[HemBear]

The answer is yes. Jackie is great, one of the best. Appling is great, especially at third base. Walter Johnson is decent. H. Wagner is excellent. Cap Anson card is one of the best hitter cards.

[bailey]

Originally Posted by CardSharx

Will that even be possible with 100K? Just looking at the Negro Leagues set, it seems some of the cards will cost 100K themselves.

No. I did it for 290K, but got 3 cards in packs saving at least 60K.

[Marleigh]

The most worthwhile non live collection in my opinion is deadball bronzes.

it can be completed for less than the discard value of the card (4k) the bronzes have good potential in tournaments and the Cy Young is a decent starter up to silver then does a decent job for you in the bullpen (still using him in my f2p team in diamond and he is performing well)

[Marleigh]

Originally Posted by HemBear

The answer is yes. Jackie is great, one of the best. Appling is great, especially at third base. Walter Johnson is decent. H. Wagner is excellent. Cap Anson card is one of the best hitter cards.

just the pitchers for the Walter Johnson will set you back 140k, the hitters around 90-100k, it depends whether they are upgrades on what you currently have as to whether you deem it worthwhile as Walter himself is around 160k, but I've found locked diamond cards become a bit of a millstone for me and i feel like i have to use them

Applings collection costs have risen with the TOTD collections, and the cards aren't really that great so its probably more worthwhile to buy the Appling straight out

but all of these are pie in the sky figures for most F2P players as the likelihood of them getting the PP to be able to afford either the card or to complete the collection is extremely low unless they spend an inordinate amount of time playing the AH and spamming tournaments

[QuantaCondor]

Originally Posted by Marleigh

but all of these are pie in the sky figures for most F2P players as the likelihood of them getting the PP to be able to afford either the card or to complete the collection is extremely low unless they spend an inordinate amount of time playing the AH and spamming tournaments

If anything, the barrier is learning about how the game works and how everything is structured, in terms of the engine, the release schedule, the economy, and so on. That takes some time, but it's interesting and other people can help you along. The tourney queues and AH buys needed to execute on that knowledge don't take much time at all in comparison.

If you have a good knowledge of a few tourney formats, you can basically just queue for dailies twice a day (early + afternoon) and make decent PP with very little time investment. There is a barrier to entry in terms of time when figuring out how to become competitive in different formats, but it's not like you're doing something boring or tedious-- building and refining tourney rosters is one of the most interesting and varied things PT has to offer, especially with the Championship Series coming up.

There are also relatively time-light AH speculation opportunities available basically year-round. There's some amount of risk speculating on stuff, and the payoff for your PP can sometimes take a while depending on the nature of the speculation, but the payoff can also be absolutely enormous and explode the amount of assets you have to work with if you connect. And it's pretty low maintenance/low time investment once you have a strategy set up for what you think will increase in value.

I would say that these two things are probably the best thing someone can do post-live sets, especially for people who care about the amount of time it takes to crank out more PP. Someone could also queue DoD/Bo3 tourneys and/or do a bunch of AH flipping if they wanted, but I don't think that's at all necessary to be competitive. As F2P, I'm sitting at 5.5M PP in liquid assets, all TOTD/SE Jackie/Appling/Whitaker/Ruth/Sisler/Bench collections done (among others), and a crapton of useful locked cards, all basically from queuing dailies and then making smart speculative decisions, even with BFF restrictions preventing me from selling any gold, diamond, or perfect nonlive cards I pack. And I'm just one of several really successful F2P, and certainly not the one with the most assets. Don't give up hope on F2P just yet.

[bailey]

Originally Posted by Marleigh

The most worthwhile non live collection in my opinion is deadball bronzes.

it can be completed for less than the discard value of the card (4k) the bronzes have good potential in tournaments and the Cy Young is a decent starter up to silver then does a decent job for you in the bullpen (still using him in my f2p team in diamond and he is performing well)

Are you sure about that? When I completed it, I think I had paid about 4500 for the lot. Rather than submit, I became a seller, when I saw someone get 2K for Rath, although the most I ever got was 1750.....

[Marleigh]

Originally Posted by bailey

Are you sure about that? When I completed it, I think I had paid about 4500 for the lot. Rather than submit, I became a seller, when I saw someone get 2K for Rath, although the most I ever got was 1750.....

I did the collection yesterday for 3k on one of my newer accounts, many of the cards are around 100 PP, most are around 200 Rath was by far the most expensive at 700

[Marleigh]

Originally Posted by QuantaCondor

As F2P, I'm sitting at 5.5M PP in liquid assets, all TOTD/SE Jackie/Appling/Whitaker/Ruth/Sisler/Bench collections done (among others), and a crapton of useful locked cards, all basically from queuing dailies and then making smart speculative decisions, even with BFF restrictions preventing me from selling any gold, diamond, or perfect nonlive cards. And I'm just one of several really successful F2P, and certainly not the one with the most assets. Don't give up hope on F2P just yet.

but lets face it you are the 0.0001% of F2P player, not talking about people like yourself but people who don't have the time or opportunity to be sat on the game all of the time. Some people don't view the game as a second job.

[QuantaCondor]

Originally Posted by Marleigh

but lets face it you are the 0.0001% of F2P player, not talking about people like yourself but people who don't have the time or opportunity to be sat on the game all of the time. Some people don't view the game as a second job.

My point is that "the game is a second job" types involving a ton of AH flipping and frequent tourney queuing aren't the only path to success as F2P, or even necessarily the most successful one. Treating toplevel F2P success as unattainable because "oh I don't have time for AH stuff or queuing for tourneys all day" is just a misunderstanding about what you need to succeed, and putting that out there is misleading for aspiring players who want to see success as F2P. Doing analytics on stats exports from leagues/tourneys and constructing a speculation strategy-- a one-and-done use of time in both cases-- is really just an act of playing the game. Maybe you might not have time to do a few hours of model building (or, like, 30m to an hour of looking up BBRef stuff and writing things in a doc to predict their content), but it's much more likely that you either can't or don't want to do those things.

I think that's really the big misconception here-- "time consuming" F2P success happens mostly in one-time spurts in which you study the game and formulate an efficient strategy, not brute force "PT is a second job monitoring the AH/queuing for tourneys" that I see put out there as an excuse. I might be part of the 0.0001% of F2P in PT, but it's because I'm a physics grad student who loves modeling how PT and tourneys work and I have some (relatively basic) insights on how the PT economy operates, not because I sit on the AH all day. Other successful F2P I know do modeling in their daily lives, or maybe they do actual financial stuff-- but the common theme is bringing expertise from their lives into PT, not just brute forcing a big time commitment. None of us have the time or the patience to brute force it.

[Marleigh]

Originally Posted by QuantaCondor

My point is that "the game is a second job" types involving a ton of AH flipping and frequent tourney queuing aren't the only path to success as F2P, or even necessarily the most successful one. Treating toplevel F2P success as unattainable because "oh I don't have time for AH stuff or queuing for tourneys all day" is just a misunderstanding about what you need to succeed, and putting that out there is misleading for aspiring players who want to see success as F2P. Doing analytics on stats exports from leagues/tourneys and constructing a speculation strategy-- a one-and-done use of time in both cases-- is really just an act of playing the game. Maybe you might not have time to do a few hours of model building (or, like, 30m to an hour of looking up BBRef stuff and writing things in a doc to predict their content), but it's much more likely that you either can't or don't want to do those things.

I think that's really the big misconception here-- "time consuming" F2P success happens mostly in one-time spurts in which you study the game and formulate an efficient strategy, not brute force "PT is a second job monitoring the AH/queuing for tourneys" that I see put out there as an excuse. I might be part of the 0.0001% of F2P in PT, but it's because I'm a physics grad student who loves modeling how PT and tourneys work and I have some (relatively basic) insights on how the PT economy operates, not because I sit on the AH all day. Other successful F2P I know do modeling in their daily lives, or maybe they do actual financial stuff-- but the common theme is bringing expertise from their lives into PT, not just brute forcing a big time commitment. None of us have the time or the patience to brute force it.

Im not talking about myself, im talking about the vast majority of f2p players. Ive won plenty of tourneys including saturday iron warriors, and you'll find posts on this forum telling people how the totd players were decided and what players were coming up as it was probably too easy to figure out. Though my problem is being in a non US time zone so the ah is dead during hours I'd be able to monitor it. I'm talking about people with jobs and families and little free time who get a chance to check how they are doing in the morning and maybe kick off some tournaments, the top players are well out of their reach, and in relation to the game and this thread there are plenty of them, because the vast majority of players are at gold or below

[dkgo]

The fact is the vast majority of F2P players simply aren't "good" at the game. You have to have a knack for this type of stuff. The majority of players are the same people who will complain that the Magic Arena economy doesn't reward you enough to make a tier 1 deck so they stay low-ranked, or that Hearthstone is just RNG and that is why they are low ranked. But the same people who make the highest level F2P in Perfect Team are also Mythic in Arena and top Legend in Hearthstone and because they have a level of understanding of how to succeed in this game that most don't.

[QuantaCondor]

Originally Posted by Marleigh

Im not talking about myself, im talking about the vast majority of f2p players. Ive won plenty of tourneys including saturday iron warriors, and you'll find posts on this forum telling people how the totd players were decided and what players were coming up as it was probably too easy to figure out. Though my problem is being in a non US time zone so the ah is dead during hours I'd be able to monitor it. I'm talking about people with jobs and families and little free time who get a chance to check how they are doing in the morning and maybe kick off some tournaments, the top players are well out of their reach, and in relation to the game and this thread there are plenty of them, because the vast majority of players are at gold or below

My PT process, the one that I use to really generate my assets, for the past month or 2 has just involved re-queuing for the next set of dailies twice a day (in the morning, in the evening) and cycling through the AH player strings I have set up during those tourney queue checks (takes like a minute tops). So, just an AH run in the morning and the evening, taking probably less than 5m to get through. I might check more frequently some days e.g. on weekends or on new content launches, but any checks on top of the morning/evening cycle really diminish quickly in terms of their value. However, it takes a lot of knowledge and even some initiative to get to the point where knowing which tourney rosters are the most profitable (right now I run cap rosters, for the curious; in general the more expensive the format, the better the daily is). If you wait for the knowledge about how e.g. TOTD was structured to get out to the community, you're probably too late.

The vast majority of F2Ps aren't lacking in time to do any of this, they're lacking in knowledge. That's not a slam on F2Ps, it's just a statement that achieving detailed, ahead-of-the-curve knowledge about content, card performance, tourney metas, and so on is hard to achieve. For example, Saturday Iron Warriors is not a very good example of a tourney that is a good moneymaker on average, and I wouldn't use that as a low-time-commitment consistent option for those who want to generate more assets. "I've won a lot of tourneys" isn't a good metric either. You want to make a lot of PP, not up your DoD/Bo3 wincount (after a certain point; DoD/Bo3/Bo7 briefly have their place in the early stages of a good tourney strategy to give some starting capital).

If someone says "I queue for bronze/silver/gold/etc. dailies and have a good analytical model for each, I have a detailed prediction of the upcoming content and I check for speculatory buys about twice a day and I still can't see success as F2P", then I'd be convinced that regular time commitment is more relevant. But so few people optimize the facets of the game like that; the barrier is figuring out what to do and how to modify it as time goes on, not in actually doing it.

[Orcin]

Originally Posted by QuantaCondor

My PT process, the one that I use to really generate my assets, for the past month or 2 has just involved re-queuing for the next set of dailies twice a day (in the morning, in the evening) and cycling through the AH player strings I have set up during those tourney queue checks (takes like a minute tops). So, just an AH run in the morning and the evening, taking probably less than 5m to get through. I might check more frequently some days e.g. on weekends or on new content launches, but any checks on top of the morning/evening cycle really diminish quickly in terms of their value. However, it takes a lot of knowledge and even some initiative to get to the point where knowing which tourney rosters are the most profitable (right now I run cap rosters, for the curious; in general the more expensive the format, the better the daily is). If you wait for the knowledge about how e.g. TOTD was structured to get out to the community, you're probably too late.

The vast majority of F2Ps aren't lacking in time to do any of this, they're lacking in knowledge. That's not a slam on F2Ps, it's just a statement that achieving detailed, ahead-of-the-curve knowledge about content, card performance, tourney metas, and so on is hard to achieve. For example, Saturday Iron Warriors is not a very good example of a tourney that is a good moneymaker on average, and I wouldn't use that as a low-time-commitment consistent option for those who want to generate more assets. "I've won a lot of tourneys" isn't a good metric either. You want to make a lot of PP, not up your DoD/Bo3 wincount (after a certain point; DoD/Bo3/Bo7 briefly have their place in the early stages of a good tourney strategy to give some starting capital).

If someone says "I queue for bronze/silver/gold/etc. dailies and have a good analytical model for each, I have a detailed prediction of the upcoming content and I check for speculatory buys about twice a day and I still can't see success as F2P", then I'd be convinced that regular time commitment is more relevant. But so few people optimize the facets of the game like that; the barrier is figuring out what to do and how to modify it as time goes on, not in actually doing it.

Are you trying to convince us in a subtle way that you are smarter than the rest of us, or are you telling us that we could do what you do if we would only use our brains and put in a little effort? On one hand, you seem to imply that anyone could do what you do and we are being misled by people that say we can't. But then you explain that you are a physics grad student and you built models and you applied your knowledge of gaming to this game. Most other people don't have these skills, and I think you know that. So, what's your point...

[QuantaCondor]

Originally Posted by Orcin

Are you trying to convince us in a subtle way that you are smarter than the rest of us, or are you telling us that we could do what you do if we would only use our brains and put in a little effort? On one hand, you seem to imply that anyone could do what you do and we are being misled by people that say we can't. But then you explain that you are a physics grad student and you built models and you applied your knowledge of gaming to this game. Most other people don't have these skills, and I think you know that. So, what's your point...

I'm saying that there's more to F2P success than raw time commitment. I don't think that's a stretch.

To clarify: If I sat down and laid out all my tools, including all my game models and predictions for content and strategies for how to get ahead of AH trends and handed them over to someone, they could deploy them with good success and not that much time commitment. That's what I mean when I kinda imply that the knowledge is important; if you know what you're doing, really anyone can do it.

But not everyone has the interest or the background or the connections to the point where they can develop those tools. I owe some of my success to BFF players who had a better grasp of the game economy than I did and being able to follow their approach. I'd imagine some players in the group owe some of their success to the really detailed modeling insights that I've tried to provide.

Everyone's story and approach to the game is different. My only point is that success mostly comes from being able to develop and access good game knowledge, rather than the raw time commitment that I see a lot of people write off F2P success as.

[mayday10]

I think people realize that we cant have 500 teams in perfect league, all with the top player in every position. There does need to be a pecking order... and that will be based on people who spend $, those who can make forecasting models and really understand the grain of the economy and software, and also those who can and are willing to put a ton of time in.

I think the issue though lies in that the way everything is made now, the only 'goal' seems to be to get to perfect. There is an engaging initial goal of the Live Collections, but after that, things kind of hit a brick wall.



Anyways. As far as collections go. Dead Ball bronzes was easy and cheap. Most of them cost way more than the card is worth, and the card isnt even a real tangible upgrade over the Live SE players. I did the Appling and Whitaker missions because I lucked out on some of the higher end cards.

I would suggest looking at missions that come with packs and if you are close, or at least collected most of the pricier components. When the 80s TOTD came out, I ended up only 1 card short on the hitters and was able to spend a bargain amount for 3 Historical Packs. I ended up selling off some cards and doing the pitchers as well which resulted in 3 more Historical Packs and Rickey Henderson.

[chazzycat]

Originally Posted by Orcin

Are you trying to convince us in a subtle way that you are smarter than the rest of us, or are you telling us that we could do what you do if we would only use our brains and put in a little effort? On one hand, you seem to imply that anyone could do what you do and we are being misled by people that say we can't. But then you explain that you are a physics grad student and you built models and you applied your knowledge of gaming to this game. Most other people don't have these skills, and I think you know that. So, what's your point...

Honestly it seems like the community here is VASTLY overestimating the difficulty involved with collection speculation.

They literally released a bunch of sets where all you have to do is sort various decades by WAR and go out and buy those players. Several BFF teams made a KILLING this way in the past week or two based on that simple approach.

Myself I did not participate in the feeding frenzy, purely out of principle...I don't enjoy the market side of the game. But Quc is right, that is objectively the correct way to play the game.